


My Favorite Martian

by Ephermeralk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Angst, Bottom!Sam, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:19:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3443546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ephermeralk/pseuds/Ephermeralk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a space capsule crashes onto the beach where Dean’s working as an astronomer, he expects a NASA astronaut inside, not a humanoid extra-terrestrial named Sam. And he definitely doesn’t expect them to have much in common--like, say, being brothers. After all, his own brother Sam had died years ago in what was supposedly a house fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Favorite Martian

**Author's Note:**

> Written for cassiopeia7’s amazing art for super_disney. She had originally asked me to for some ideas, and then I wound up writing fic. Well, really I wound up procrastinating a lot, and going to sleep instead of writing, so. Uh. It’s about ½ beta’d by sleepypercy and ½ written in haste this afternoon because I am a procrastinating procrastinator who procrastinates. Yup. All remaining mistakes are mine, feel free to point them out. I do wish this story could have been like, at least four times as long to really give cassiopeia7’s art everything it deserves...but alas. This is all I could manage. Hope y’all enjoy it anyways!
> 
> Art is here: [At Cassiopeia7's LJ](http://cassiopeia7.livejournal.com/511830.html)

As long as Dean’s been aware of his own thoughts, he’s loved space. Actually, obsessed might be more accurate. His first real memory is of sitting on his mother’s lap, her stomach large and rounded out with his baby brother, watching his father, the infamous astronaut John Winchester, land on mars. Seeing the American flag planted into hard rock the color of ripe tomatoes.

He’d been four years old. By that point, the feel of his dad’s thick fingers scruffing up his hair, or the sound of his laughter was hardly a memory. That was over thirty years ago now.

A lot has changed since then.

\--

Dean digs his toes into the sand, the faint sound of Led Zeppelin’s The Immigrant Song drifting out of his portable speakers. It’s still warm and humid, despite the fact that the sun had disappeared behind the ocean with a flash of green light almost nine hours ago. By now, it’s practically due to start rising over the western edge of Hawai’i. Time for Dean to scale the ridge out of Pololu Valley and head back to his government run quarters up on Mauna Kea. Return to wearing thick wool socks and a parka.

Dean rather prefers the light sweater-vest and leather jacket combo that he’d donned to come out here tonight. Despite the fact that most people seem to think that Hawai’i is hothothot all the time, it’s not true. Dean’s been here for six months now on sabbatical , and he’s spent most of it freezing his ass off. The observatory he’s using for his research is the highest in the world, at over 13,000ft.

He stands up to gather his equipment, taking one last measurement in the early morning sky, when a streak of blinding, white-hot light followed by an overwhelming sonic boom bursts into his vision, practically shaking the atoms around him.

Huh. He wasn’t aware of any space capsules dropping into the waters. Usually they mention that stuff well ahead of time.

Robert Plant echoes out from behind him, We come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow. The timing’s just a little bit creepy. He bends down to turn off the CD, letting silence fall over the beach. Of course, that makes it all the more eerie. It makes the hackles on the back of his neck stand up. He tries to shake off his sixth sense by re-adjusting his glasses over the bridge of his nose, when he hears a voice drifting over the water.

“H-h-h-h-elp,” the voice says. It’s masculine, although it has a light ring to it—ethereal, almost. And although Dean’s never been known to be overly charitable (just ask his students about deadline extensions or grade inflation), he’s not going to leave someone in the middle of the ocean.

“Hey!” he yells. “I’m over here. Do you think you can swim to shore?”

“Swim?”

Damn. This guy must have suffered some serious brain damage on re-entry. “Yeah. You know. Use your arms and legs to go through water so that you don’t drown?”

“I…I don’t know how to do that.”

Great. Where the fuck is NASA when they’re needed? Shouldn’t they have a 1-800-return-our-astronaut-to-us number?

“Alright. Well, just stay there. It looks like the tide is bringing you to shore. You should get here in about twenty minutes.”

“Okay. Do you have tools to fix my spaceship? It broke down somewhere in the mesosphere. Lost control of my speed and automatic navigation. I was just lucky I had enough leverage to manually land it. What ocean is this, by the way?”

“Well, first off—I’m an astronomer, not a spaceship mechanic. So no. I don’t have the tools to fix that. You’ll have to call your supervisor. And secondly, you’re in the Pacific. This right here is the big island of Hawai’i.”

“Cool. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“Aren’t you a lucky one, then? By the way, do you have a name?”

“Sam.”

There’s absolutely no reason why Dean should have an attachment to that name. Sure, he’d had a brother once, supposedly named Sammy, but Dean doesn’t remember him. Sammy had died in a fire, back when he was six months old. And Mom? Mom had died a fiery death too, trying to get him back.

Still though, he’s met plenty of Sam’s, Samuel’s, Sammy’s between now and then. There’s no reason why this Sam should be any different.

Except that, somehow, with no other reason than a tingling in the base of his brain stem, Dean knows that he is.

\--

Sammy’s half-drowned by the time that he washes to shore, barely able to crawl out of the pod that carried him down to Earth.

He’s also not wearing a NASA uniform. Instead, Sam’s covered head to toe in a soft silver fabric that glows dully in the early morning light.

Weird.

“Sam?” Dean asks, as he helps stabilize Sam’s neck, lowering him onto the warm sand.

“Hmm?”

“You’re not from here, are you?”

“Dammit. Fucking antennae, always popping up when I’m stressed out. They’re a dead giveaway every time.”

Dean swallows and pulls back the hood of Sam’s full-body suit. Sure enough, there are small bug-like antennae protruding out of locks of thick, chestnut-brown, wavy hair. They’re gorgeous, and Dean can’t resist running a finger up the side of one.

Sam groans and bucks his body up, and fuck if that isn’t a pretty sight. Dean repeats the movement again, just to watch Sam’s response.

“Sensitive?” Dean asks, even though the answer’s already clear from the tightness in Sam’s silver suit that wasn’t present earlier. He definitely wants to know if what Sam’s packing underneath is as humanoid as the rest of him. And hopes to hell that it is.

“Yeah, feels good, Dean.”

“Wait—I haven’t told you my name yet—how did you know?”

Sam smiles lazily up at him. Turns out, he’s got dimples the size of Halley’s comet.

“Your mind is crystal clear to me, Dean Winchester, I’d be hard pressed to shut it out.”

“You read minds?”

Sam shrugs. “Never thought much of it. Makes life a whole lot easier when you know what someone else wants.”

“Well, then. Tell me. What exactly do I want?”

This time, Sam outright grins. “Me.”

Dean scoffs, and throws back, “You wish.” He still flushes though, burnt-red like Mars.

\--

As it turns out, Sam can make his space-ship invisible with a touch of his hand. He can make himself invisible, too, although Dean’s less excited about that trick.

“You can stay with me on the condition that you don’t pull that invisibility crap unless I tell you to, got it?” Dean growls, slightly irritably after they’re back in his car, driving up the access road to Mauna Kea.

Sam, of course, points out a sign on the way up that warns drivers of “invisible cows.”

“So how come your Earth-cows can disappear but you can’t?” he asks.

“They aren’t really invisible. It’s just the fog…” Dean explains before he sees that Sam is smirking at him.

“Ugh. You suck. Majorly.”

Sam smirks even harder, if that’s even possible. “So I’ve been told. Care to test it out?”

If Dean’s foot presses a little harder on the gas pedal, it’s because he needs to get some space between him and this obviously alien-nymphomaniac. Definitely not because he likes the way that Sam’s tongue is sneaking out of his mouth and wetting his lips.

\--

If he had any lingering concerns about Sam, they disappear the moment they walk into his house, and his Rottweiler, Copernicus, tackles Sam to the floor, licking every open inch of tan skin he can find.

“Whoa there, big boy,” Sam says, half-wrestling with the dog, although he’s laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Dean asks, after Sam’s laughing is clearly in response to something that isn’t Cop’s incessant tongue-bath.

“Your dog, he’s got quite the sense of humor.”

Dean raises his eyebrows in disbelief. “You can talk to dogs?”

“Well, it’s less of actual words, more of seeing the images that their minds are projecting, and interjecting my own images back at them.”

“And how exactly does that work?”

“How to humans learn language?” Sam questions him in return. “It’s just something my brain is innately programmed to do.”

“So what’s Cop saying to you right now?”

“He says we’re gonna be best friends, as long as I take him out for runs on the beach, and feed him leftovers from the dinner table.”

Dean laughs. “Doesn’t take a mind reader to figure that one out.”

“Cop is telling me he’d really like some bacon about now.”

“He always wants bacon.”

“Hm. I’ve never had it. Is it good?”

“Belly of a pig? The best,” Dean says. “Now why don’t you go take a shower, and I’ll make us some. After you get clean, you can tell me all about yourself.”

“Alright,” Sam replies, stripping out of his silver suit in Dean’s living room.

It zips. Or unzips, really. All the way down Sam’s toned abdomen. Dean’s gaze follows a trail of dark hair, starting in the middle of his chest and leading down towards…

Sam slips his arms out of the suit, and fuck. Dean’s not sure how Sam ever actually fit them inside of that suit. The material slides over slim hips, a perky ass, and holy hell, that is definitely larger than any cock Dean’s spent face-time with before.

Stretching his arms above his head, Sam pops a few cracks in his back. “Ahh, it sure feels good to get out of that space suit.”

Dean practically runs into the kitchen.

\--

It turns out that Sam doesn’t like bacon after all. Or any meat, really. The memory of fear and pain linger on his tongue, apparently.

“What about the lettuce, Sam?” Dean asks, half-curious, half-smart-ass. “Can you taste that leaf’s terror at being hacked unwillingly from its stem?”

Sam smiles sadly at him, and it feels fucking condescending. “Of course. But it’s only a weak remembrance now.”

“Great. This is perfect. Exactly what I need—a lunatic in my house.”

“Hey—I’m not a lunatic. I’m a Martian.”

“You know what? I’ve had just about all I can handle tonight, Sam. Nothing personal, I’m just gonna have another drink and I’ll see you in the morning.”

It takes him a long time to fall asleep, thoughts of Sam racing through his brain.

\--

Dean wakes up in the middle of the night to Sam slipping underneath the covers and wrapping his gigantic, humanoid hand around Dean’s waist. Sam’s cock is soft, but pressing firmly against his ass.

“Sam?” he mumbles, trying to figure out if this is a wet dream, or reality.

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Isn’t this what humans do when they like each other? Sleep together?”

“Uh…yeah. Sometimes. When it’s been previously agreed upon by both partners.”

That only makes Sam snuggle in deeper, and Dean’s forced to hold his body still, even though it wants to press back into Sam’s overheated form. He’s got to run at least a few degrees hotter than 98.6F.

“Oh. Well, you were dreaming pretty loudly about me…so I thought it’d be ok…that you wanted me here…”

Sam starts to move out of bed, and even though Dean can’t read minds, he can feel Sam’s distress. Which bothers him, on some deep, fundamental level.

He wants to make Sam happy. No, scratch that. He needs to make Sam happy.

Dean grabs on to Sam’s wrist, before he can move any further away. The memory foam’s already started to form a Sam-like indent.

“Stay?” he asks. “I’d like you to stay. Please?”

He tries to project with his mind, the image of Sam in his arms, until Sam starts to laugh, deep from his stomach.

“Alright, alright, I get the picture.”

It feels right this way. Holding Sam. Nuzzling in to Sam’s neck. Even after his shower, he still smells faintly of fire, which Dean finds comforting.

Dean sleeps well with Sam in his arms. Like a baby, he tells Sam in the morning.

\--

As it turns out, Sam’s a fast learner. Picks up whatever Dean has to teach easily. The hardest, of course, is keeping Sam’s hands off of him when they’re in public.

“Dude, you gotta stop trying to hold my hand when we’re at the grocery store,” he says, a week after Sam’s been with him.

“I didn’t want to get lost,” Sam when they get home, whining in the midst of seamlessly juggling four papayas. “Plus, I don’t like the way that people look at you.”

Dean raises his eyebrows to that. “And how’s that?”

“I dunno. Like you’re not really a person. Like they just want to fuck you, or be fucked by you.”

Sam. He’s so cute. So naïve. “You realize that’s a compliment, right?”

“I like you,” Sam states. It’s only the second time he’s brought it up, even though they’ve been sleeping in the same bed every night, Dean wrapped around Sam. “I like what’s in here,” he says, running his hand through Dean’s hair.

“Ah, well. That would be hair gel. The cheap stuff from aisle 9. Been using it since I was fourteen.”

“You’re impossible,” Sam says, huffing and he turns to put the rest of the groceries away.

It seems silly, how hard it is for Dean to gather the courage deep inside himself to kiss Sam. Especially when it’s so clear that Sam likes him. And that for some, unbeknownst reason, he likes what he sees in Dean’s head. But Sam seeing inside his head, his memories—that makes it even worse.

It means that Sam knows how Dean sees himself. Not the self-assured PhD, award winning professor that he presents to his students. To his colleagues.

Instead, he probably sees a son to a father who buried himself in alcohol and tabloids after his mother’s death. Someone never good enough to patch the gaping hole that his brother and his mom had left.

He sees the cracks in Dean’s armor. The holes that can’t be patched on the inside of his psyche.

Still. There’s no resisting bubble-gum color of Sam’s lips or the hint of collar bones peeking out of his shirt, and then they’re kissing, wet and sloppy, Sam pressed against the refrigerator door.

“Ever had a blowjob?” Dean asks, once he’s come up for air.

“A what?”

Dean grins. “Here. I’ll show you.”

He kisses a straight line down Sam’s long, muscled chest, stopping only to unzip Sam’s pants. The sound Sam makes when he takes Sam’s dick out of his pants is unearthly. And when Dean leans forward those last few inches and takes the head of Sam’s dick into his mouth?

Dean’s had loud partners before, but it’s nothing compared to how Sam sounds, a mix of breathy gasps, and drawn-out groans.

He swallows as much as Sam’s cock as he can without choking before licking up the underside, tongue tracing the spongy veins. The taste of Sam’s hot, testosterone fueled dick in his mouth turns Dean on more than it should, and he’s got to stick a hand down his own pants to quench his own lust.

Eventually, Sam takes the blow job into his hands, so to speak, buries his fingernails into Dean’s hair, and pushes him down on his cock, until he’s pressed snugly against the back of Dean’s throat.

Dean lets Sam use his mouth until the end, when he comes with a grunt, filling Dean’s taste buds with bitter, warm spunk. After he can use his muscles again, Sam spreads Dean out on the tile floor and returns the favor. Then they drag themselves into bed, too tired to close the door.

Copernicus jumps up onto the bed and pushes his way in between the two of them, and Dean can’t even be bothered to tell him to get off.

Sam, the softie that he is, even cuddles the beast.

\--

Dean comes home from work in the morning about two weeks later to find Sam on the couch with his dad’s journal in his hands, Copernicus’s head lying comfortably in Sam’s lap.

“Sam? What are you doing with that?” He’s a little angry, because extra-terrestrial or not, that’s his personal belongings. Something he’s not overly eager to share. Sam needs to ask before touching his shit.

But when Sam looks up at him, slanted eyes looking scared, Dean knows something’s wrong. Dean deflates in a split-second.

“What is it?”

Sam holds out a picture to Dean.

It’s the only one of his family. His little brother Sammy on top of their father’s shoulders.

“Is this you?” he asks. As if it could be anyone else.

“Yeah. And my mom, and little brother Sammy. They died in fires, not long after that picture was taken.”

“...and your dad?”

“Still alive. Spends most of his time in and out of jail for drunk and disorderly conduct. He never really kept it together after we lost them. And after I moved away, went off to college—well, it got even worse.”

“Oh. Can I meet him?”

“Don’t know why you’d want to, Sammy. He’s half-condescending and completely plastered on his nicest days, verbally abusive on his worst. I mean, I love him. He’s my dad, of course I do. I’m just…not sure why you’d want to. Doesn’t win any dad of the year awards, that’s for sure.”

Dean definitely doesn’t expect it, when the next words out of Sam’s mouth are, “…because he’s my dad too.”

\--

He blacks out after that, but it’s to be expected, considering he’s just found out that he’s been sleeping with his very not-dead younger brother.

“Are you sure?” He asks for the fifth time.

“Yeah. I have the exact same picture. It’s the only thing that was ever in my adoption file on mars. It just stated I was a half-breed with early manifesting Martian traits.”

“So Mom…?”

“Yeah. From Mars. Guess she must have fallen in love with Dad when he landed on our planet, and followed him back.”

“And you? Why did they take you but not me?”

“Probably ‘cause you take after Dad.”

“Guess that explains why I’ve always loved space.”

“And why I’ve always loved Earth.”

“Two sides of the same coin,” Dean laughs, unamused.

“What do we do now?”

It’s the same question that’s been drifting around aimlessly in Dean’s head.

“Guess we stop fucking, for starters. Try to be brothers?”

“Yeah…I guess…” Sam says, but he doesn’t sound sold on the idea. To be honest, Dean isn’t either.

\--

It’s hard, trying to go backwards towards a platonic, brotherly relationship with Sam. Dean misses holding Sam’s hand while they watch T.V. after dinner. Bickering with Sam over the remote. There’s no sneaking up behind Sam and putting his hands down Sam’s pants while he’s baking Dean cherry pie for Dean to bring to work.

Dean takes to letting Copernicus sleep in bed with him every night, just so he can fall asleep to the sound of another being breathing, another heartbeat in the room with him.

He comes in from work, 72 hours later, to Sam drinking coffee at the wooden table, dog at his feet, reading one of Dean’s theoretical books revolving around possible shapes of the universe in relation to critical density. Dean leans more towards supporting the hyperbolic universe theory.

Watching Sam digest his words, looking so serious, so intent, is when Dean decides this being brother’s thing—it isn’t working for him.

“Sam?”

Sam’s antenna raise in surprise. He’d been more deeply ensconced then Dean had thought.

“Yeah?”

“This isn’t working for me.”

Sam looks unsurprised, but starts to clear off the table. Taking away any sign that he’d been there at all.

“Yeah. I know.” Sam avoids looking at his eyes, and reaches down to scratch the dog between his ears. “It’s okay. I’ve got to get back home anyways. I got a call this morning. I’m to fix my space-ship and return to Mars. I was only granted leave to study human behavior. Apparently I’ve gotten too attached.”

“Wait…you’re leaving?”

No, no, no. This is all wrong. Sam can’t be leaving. Not when Dean’s decided he’s all in—fuck the ethics of the situation. They’re not hurting anyone, and he’s never liked anyone as much as he likes Sam. He doesn’t want to live without the casual intimacy of Sam’s fingers running through his hair. The way he can read Dean’s mind, but chooses not to nine-times out of ten, because he respects Dean’s privacy. How Sam cooks meat for Dean, even when he won’t eat it. The way Sam hogs the covers at night, and finds it amusing to superglue Dean’s beer bottle to his hand when he’s not looking. Dean’s not ready to give that up.

“No. Sam. You can’t leave. I…I goddamn fucking love you, ok?”

“What?”

“You’re my little brother. And I’m not just letting you leave again. Not when I just found you.”

The only thing Sam hears is apparently I love you. Which he keeps repeating. Over and over. Until it gets kind of annoying.

“Jesus Christ, Sammy. Yes. I love you. Now shut the fuck up.”

Instead, it’s actually Dean who shuts up, as Sam pushes him down onto the scratched, unpolished kitchen table and climbs on top.

It’s been a few days since either of them have fucked, and the weight of Sam’s hips moving over his own have him squirming and hardening.

“You sure you’re okay with this—with us?” Dean asks. Because he doesn’t want Sam to fuck him because he’s leaving. Or because he can feel Dean’s distress. He wants Sam to want him. Like Dean wants his little brother.

Sam, the bastard that he is, grins. “Oh hell yeah, I want you big brother.”

Seeing as he’s just gotten home, and Sam’s the energetic one, caffeine coursing through his veins, he lets Sam do the work. Opening himself up, before holding on to Dean’s dick and sliding down. Taking every hot inch of Dean into his body. It’s better than heaven, better than Mars, better than proving that space is hyperbolic, being inside Sam’s body. It takes life down to the essentials. To the importance of another person. Of connection. Of shared humanity. And Sam, partial human that he is, gives Dean that.

Sam rides him, wild and fierce, creaking the table loud enough to wake the dog who wanders out of the room in search of a more quiet sleeping space. Eventually he gets tired of pulling almost all the way off Dean’s cock and switches to making tight circles with his hips.

Dean’s brain slowly turns to goo as Sam speeds up again, bouncing on his dick like he’s trying to win a blue ribbon at the rodeo.

“Fuck…ugh…yeah…just like that…” he says.

Dean reaches up and jerks Sam off—once, twice, three times—and then Sam’s coming. Watching Sam shoot all over himself, leaving wisps of white come across his prominent pecs and abdomen is just about the hottest thing Dean’s ever seen. And combined with Sam’s ass milking his cock with rhythmic, pulsating contractions—that spurts Dean well over the edge.

“Stay with me,” he says, his post-coitus lizard brain in control. “I want to get to know you. Really know you. As my little brother, and as my partner.”

Sam leans down and kisses him. In the desperate, wet, I’m not staying sort of way. Dean only lets a single tear escape down his cheek as Sam falls asleep with Dean’s cock still buried in his body.

\--

For everything that Sam is good at, Dean’s actually better at extra-terrestrial spaceship repairs. Probably all the years he spent as a teen making cash at the rundown, dusty, auto-shop in Lawrence.

It becomes their thing for about three weeks, Dean fixing-up Sam’s spaceship after he’s done with work. The engine, the hyperdrive, and communications all need tinkering. Even better than the feeling of accomplishment—that’s right, he’s Dean fucking Winchester and he’s re-building a spaceship with his hands—is watching the sun rise over the ocean afterwards with Sam at his side. Shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand, knee to knee.

They don’t have much time left, but they make use of what little they do have. Especially since Sam seems to have a thing about him covered in grease. Which usually results in Sam’s hands all over his body, and Dean buried deep inside his brother.

He tries not to think about it as it gets nearer to Sam’s designated launch date. He doesn’t want to imagine how lonely his life will be without Sam. Without stuffing popcorn down his brother’s shirt, or licking the sweat from the hollow of Sam’s throat.

The date comes anyways. Painful. Inevitable.

He holds back tears, but just barely. Drowns himself in bourbon before Sam’s even gone, because he just can’t with this. Not with losing his brother for the second time.

Dean ignores the voice in his head that tells him after Sam leaves, once he’s gone in a fiery flash, Dean’s going to end up exactly like his father. Longing. Pining. Drunk. Inconsolable in his grief.

Dean does his best to put on his game face for his little brother. Stay strong.

He touches his forehead to Sam’s, his brother’s stupid bangs getting in the way.

“You come back now, you hear, Sammy? Because me and you--we ain’t done. We’re blood, and that runs deeper than any Martian traits you got inside you.”

“I promise,” Sam whispers. Then he takes a knife to his hand and cuts a thin red line across his palm. He holds out the blade, handle first for Dean to grab. “Promise?” he questions.

Dean doesn’t hesitate. Hardly even winces as it opens his skin; presses his palm to Sam’s.

“Promise,” Dean affirms. They kiss, one last time, spit mixed with salty tears, and then it’s time for Sam to go. His brother’s hands trace the outline of his face, thumb rubbing up against his lips, and then Dean’s left alone on the beach.

He hikes out of the valley, and back up the ridge. Sam’s told him under no circumstance can he watch from the beach. It’s too hot. Too unpredictable. Too much risk of Dean burning alive.

And had Sam not mixed their blood together, if Dean didn’t have the dark-red proof of Sam’s promise to return on his hand, Dean would be there on the beach anyways. The pain of burning alive could hardly compare to the sinking in his stomach and the crushing weight slowly smothering his soul at the thought of never seeing Sam again.

But Dean trusts Sam. Trusts Sam’s blood in his. Sam will return to him. And Dean will be waiting.

\--

There’s no possible way to prepare for seeing Sam’s ship blow up, only seconds after it leaves the ground. It wasn’t even a thought that Dean had ever considered entertaining.

He freezes in the moment. Watches the flames spread from the inside out, and the pieces of metal falling to the ground in slow motion. It could be a second, it could be five minutes. There’s no way his brain can keep any logical time frame in his head.

Sammy, his brain supplies, when he’s finally remembered to breathe. Sammy’s dead. He’s dead, burned up, just like Dean had always thought he was. But this time, it’s much worse than he imagined. He thinks about what Sam’s last thoughts must have been. Filled with terror and fear. Fire ripping through skin, muscle, and bone. Pulling his brother apart, cell by cell. How in his last moments alive, his little brother must have been in an unfathomable amount of pain. And that he wasn’t there for Sam in his last moments.

He let Sam die alone.

Dean should have been there. Should have stood right next to his ship, and when it had blown to pieces, Dean would have died too. He would have gone the same way as Sam. Not been left alive to think about how he should have pushed harder for Sam to stay. How he shouldn’t have given in so easily. Shouldn’t have tried to fix up Sam’s spaceship.

This is his fault. His brother’s dead, and it’s his fault.

Eventually his legs find their way down to the beach, where pieces of silver metal are burning quietly with an occasional popping sound, both on the sand and in the ocean. Dean looks frantically, but there’s no sign of Sam. Not a hint of blood, or bone, or silver space suit to be found. He must have been obliterated.

Dean sits down in the hot sand, the same place where he had found Sam, and cries. He cries until his eyes are puffy, and his face hurts. Until he’s got no tears left in his body. Then he just sits and drinks in the fact that Sam had once stood where he was. Sam had once been here, and been alive. He had breathed the air that Dean is breathing now.

Despite all odds, he had met his brother. And Sam Winchester was definitely a man worth knowing.

Dean knows he has to leave before the ambulances and the helicopters with reporters arrive. His legs are shaky when he gets up but they manage to carry him out of the valley, and back up the mountain.

To his credit, he doesn’t spend the whole night drinking. Dean’s already decided he’s going to head back down around sunrise; bring the dog and a bottle of scotch. Pay his respects to Sam, and then catch the first flight out of Kona, back to Kansas in the morning. There’s no way he can spend another day on this piece of volcanic rock. No. He’s going to return to Lawrence and regroup. Find a new profession. Something that doesn’t involve space, or mechanics. Or dogs, or books. Nothing that reminds him of Sam.

Become a professional ghost hunter, or some bullshit career like that. Live in a reality where he didn’t have to fall in love with his little brother, only to watch him burn.

\--

There’s bright yellow caution tape around the site, when Dean arrives at four a.m. but nothing else. It’s quiet. Peaceful, almost. Only a few scraps of metal left to tell the story of what happened earlier.

This time, instead of crying, Dean takes a drink. He pours a little into the sand for Sam, too.

“Hey!” a voice wafts out from the jungle. “Don’t waste that, I’m fucking thirsty.”

It sounds suspiciously like Sam.

The body running towards him also looks suspiciously like Sam. Minus the antennae.

Dean checks the label, making sure that he didn’t grab Absinthe by accident. Nope. Definitely not green. No mention of any faeries anywhere on the bottle.

He’s about to drop the bottle and run back to his car, because fuck, he cannot deal with hallucinations of any sort at the moment, when Copernicus gives a bark of delight, and runs towards the man.

“C’mon, Dean,” Sam says, and now that he’s up closer, there’s no mistaking him. It’s Sam, in the flesh. “It’s me.”

“No,” he responds, his brain still unable to catch up. “No. You can’t be. You died.”

Sam looks guilty, avoiding Dean’s eyes.

“I’m sorry about that. I had to. You couldn’t know. If you knew, then they would know.”

“They?”

“My professors. The one’s supervising my stay here. Your mind would have told them the truth.”

Dean can’t believe what he’s hearing. “ You planned that? You put me through that…you made me think you died. Do you know how awful that was? I thought you were dead. That you were never coming back. That I would never get to see you again in my life…it almost broke me, Sammy.”

Sam reaches forward, and touches Dean. Places his hand on Dean’s heart, and his lips on Dean’s mouth.

He’ll have time to be mad at Sam later. Right now he just needs to breathe in Sam’s smell. Taste Sam’s lips. Process the fact that Sam’s alive, and in his arms.

“I’m here now, Dean,” Sam whispers against his lips. “And I’m not ever leaving you again. I’m gonna be like the cockroach you can’t get rid of.”

Dean snorts. “Sexy, Sam. Now kiss me, jackass.”

They kiss underneath the stars, laughing softly when Cop brings them a dead crab shell in his mouth. And later on, while Sam’s riding him on the beach, tanned skin glowing in the moonlight, blood coursing strongly through both of their bodies, Dean’s never been so glad to be alive in his life.

After they finish, Dean pulls a knife out of his shoe. This time, Sam lets him cut into his rib cage, and carve his initials into Sam’s skin. In return, Sam marks him up, just the same.

He kisses Sam slowly, teeth occasionally getting in the way of their tongues, as he feels their blood dripping down into the sand.

It feels real. It hurts. The good kind of hurt though. The kind that makes him realize that the best things in life are painful. That includes Sam. Because Sam being alive always carries with it the pain that Sam will someday die. Preferably after him.

Being Sam’s older brother means there’s nothing in the world he wouldn’t sacrifice to have Sam by his side.

Sam, the mind-reading freak that he is kisses him even deeper, before pulling back and saying, “Me, too, Dean. Me too.”


End file.
